


In the Mirror of the King

by soliari



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demon Hunters, Alternate Universe - Magic, Ambiguous Relationships, Body Horror - vague, Demons, Gen, Minor Violence, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:04:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliari/pseuds/soliari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chikara takes a solo assignment, and it all goes fine, until it doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Mirror of the King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Veto_power_over_clocks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veto_power_over_clocks/gifts).



> Hi there, veto-power-over-clocks! When I got your prompts for my assignment I was over the moon; I don't know that I _quite_ managed to fulfill both your requests at once, but I'm very happy with the result, and I hope you like it too!! This fic implies Akaashi/Ennoshita in parts, but you're welcome to read it platonically. Happy Holidays!

Chikara slides an unfamiliar single key into an unfamiliar lock on an unfamiliar apartment door around six in the evening, letting the door open into a foyer barely lit by the sun moving down to set. It's a tiny place, but not so bad, he decides, closing the door behind him. After a moment of thought, he sets down his duffle bag stuffed with clothes, and locks it. He toes his shoes off and steps into the single room that'll be home for the next three weeks, shrugging his worn green backpack off one shoulder to drop it on the floor next to where he's sure the futon will go. The apartment is quiet. After three months of joint operations with the Owls of Fukurodani, it's a welcome change, the ring of Bokuto's loud voice no longer banging around in his ears, the constant frustration of needing to keep Hinata and Bokuto at opposite ends of the dinner table no longer his responsibility. Three weeks should be enough to wear off the Tokyo edge off of him, and make him presentable for working with the rest of the Crows.

To more immediate concerns - he'd spent time adjusting and checking the ward circles around the building before he'd climbed three flights of stairs already, he deserved a reward, in the form of lunch (too late now to be called lunch, probably - dinner). Not that he expects there to be anything in the fridge: there was a certain order to using Organization apartments, and 'clearing out food' was near the top of the list, after 'clean up any and all bodily fluids'. That hadn't stopped Kageyama and Hinata infamously leaving a container of eggs in the fridge of a place that didn't see visitors for another _eight months_. (It was Chikara. And Nishinoya, but mostly Chikara. He remembered it vividly.) What greets him is the single biggest clue as to who the previous inhabitant was - a note reading _Remember to eat well!_ and a two-thousand yen bill taped to the vegetable drawer. 

"Thanks, Suga," he says, sending his thoughts to the head of base operations, and peels the bill off the drawer. That explained why the place didn't have the stale, dusty smell of disuse - whatever magic it was that Sugawara employed, the kind Chikara didn't quite understand.

So, grocery shopping first.

\---

The town is small, busy with children and warm with a comfortable network of families. The kind of place where everybody knew everybody. For some people (Nishinoya), this kind of place would be impossible to keep a low profile in, but for once, Chikara's common-seeming, sleepy features have the sort of familiarity that make him seem like he's always been there. Around his neck hangs the expensive, long-barreled Canon Akaashi had given him for his birthday, resting gently in his palms. His first step has been to case the surrounding neighborhood, making sure he knew where the temple was beyond a vague uncomfortable ache at the back of his head whenever he looked eastward, finding the neighborhood police box, wandering toward the edge of the seedy part of town. The sun has well near set by now, the neighborhood children beginning to draw back into the family stores, as he pokes his way over vegetables.

There's a pair of bags draped over his wrist as he begins his walk back, a vague plan for lazy yakisoba in his head, but his attention is more on the digital screen of the Canon in his right hand. His fingers brush over the power circle carved into the bottom of the camera, and he pushes power through it. Immediately, the screen's population doubles. Whisper-thick white wisps, the _hitodama_ of the dead, mostly, but there's a woman smiling in the direction of the tofu restaurant, her body pulsing in and out from where she peeks through the void of the living and the dead.

Ahead of him, a little girl plays pretend with her imaginary friend, laughing her way through the magic attack of an anime character Chikara vaguely recognizes from his stint watching over Hinata's younger sister. Chikara watches the imaginary friend in question on the screen, coming to a slow stop out of the flow of traffic, his finger hovering over the shutter. Many times, pleasant-seeming creatures playing with children turned vicious as soon as a child let their guard down, but Chikara can't see any of the visual cues. No horns, no dark shadow, no smile turned sour when the little girl looked away. From the humming thickness of the small creature's form, he supposes it must be a spirit wandered down from the copse of trees that lay past the town. There seems to be no need to freeze the creature in place by photographing it. He looks up, toward where the spirit plays, and drops his focus. He spots _hitodama_ in the corner of his eyes first, but he ignores the little flickers to watch the spirit materialize. It smiles like a human child, copying the girl's poses to questionable results, but its attention drifts toward him with his focus. He breathes in, slow, and pushes down on his powers, on his smell and presence. He begins to walk again, intent on being no one notable, and passes the curiously confused creature with his camera turned carefully away.

\---

The apartment seems emptier when he returns to it, banging around in the cabinet for a frying pan and chopping vegetables. Once the food is done, he puts half of it in the fridge, next to the eggs and milk he'd bought for the morning. He settles down at the round, two-person table, and plucks up his phone, turning it over to look at the screen while he waits for the noodles to cool enough to eat.

The latest notification is a message from Nishinoya, loud and full of colorful _emoji_ ; he texts back a simple _Thanks_ , and scrolls through the rest. One from Yachi, the dossier she'd promised to email him about the area in an easy summary, and one from Kazuhito, with a picture of him and Hisashi at the udon place by the apartment he shares with Kazuhito, captioned _Wish you were here but we're eating your share!!_. He laughs as he texts back his yakisoba, captioned _Homemade._ , and flicks to the next.

The last is from Akaashi, who he's worked with on and off for three years, chasing leads on a pair of men who'd had dealings all the way from Osaka to Aoba, where Karasuno's territory cut off sharply to make room for Seijo, with no progress. They'd been close, before his assignment ended, and despite his request to defer coming back, he'd been denied. Akaashi's messages are usually a calm sort of fond, not as long-winded as Suga after a few beers or as flowery as Assistant Director Takeda's, but an easy rhythm to settle into. The kind of friendship it was hard for Chikara to come by. The message is succinct even for Akaashi, three sentences of update: _We found Preacher. I've found a way in, hopefully I can have him by the end of the week. Good luck with your surveillance, Chikara._. A stone drops in Chikara's stomach, and he taps back a message. _I think you need all the luck we've both got. Be careful, and don't get yourself killed._

He gets to his yakisoba before it gets cold, but worry lays over him like a quilt.

The yakisoba polished off and dishes drying in the rack, he opens his backpack once more to re-check his supplies. The Polaroid instant camera that was his greatest weapon in demon hunting was aged, by now, but he checks it over with a veteran's eye, checking the parts. He runs his fingernail over the stack of loaded film, counting one by one with barely a murmur of his mouth, and slides his hand over the black amulet he'd received when he'd come back to Karasuno, waiting for the hum of power within it. It was the single most important piece of equipment in his pack: it'd connect him to headquarters in a pinch, act as a beacon if he were in trouble, and boost his strength in a pinch, after a smear of blood. The other tools of a demon hunter's trade - the chalk and stylus for circles, the bottle of water from a river rich with spirits, the book of banishment spells he's long since memorized, his well-stocked first aid kit, the silver knife for demon-killing - are checked over one by one. This routine is paranoia more than honestly necessary, drilled into him from the razor-sharp danger of Tokyo and Tetsuro Kuroo's surprisingly mothering leadership style. Checking is a nice way to distract himself from the damage he's sure Akaashi is in - or will be in, soon - and by the time he's done, sleep calls. Rolling out the futon and changing his clothes takes the last of his energy; it's all he can do to plug in his phone and brush his teeth.

\---

He doesn't predict the morning sun coming in through the balcony's glass doors at exactly the angle to run across his face and wake him around 7, and he groans, rolling over to try and ignore it for another hour or two. Yachi's briefing had been very clear that the man he was following was most active in the afternoons, into the evening.

He makes it an hour before the heat on the back of his head makes him feel sweaty to the back of his neck, and he rolls to sit up, raking his fingers through his hair and leaning his forearms on his knees. There had to be a better way to orient the room, and avoid the band of sunlight, but he's still bleary, and annoyed, besides. He washes his face, stares at the wreck that is his hair, and goes looking for a brush to get it to lie flat again. He messages Nishinoya, the infamous early riser, while he waits for rice to cook, and eats breakfast, his energy flowing back in as he wakes up. By 10, he's found his composure and changed clothes, and he leaves the apartment behind for the day.

It takes him longer than he thought it would to find _Alecto_ , tucked just barely in the darker part of town, where there are no children playing and his camera catches more dark flickers than light. He keeps to himself, walking the long way to avoid a group of noisy gangsters, until he turns down the side street detailed in Yachi's message. He feels it the moment he passes the invisible barrier: whatever divisions there are, here in downtown, he's crossed it, into the magic side. The flickers in his camera's view screen solidify, equally white as black, and he breathes a little easier as he spots what is unmistakably the child-like form of a _zashiki warashi_ , the luck-bringing household spirit that sometimes settled in old places. He waves to it, warmed by the surprise on its round red face, and continues on, turning right and then left again, under a store awning, until Alecto comes into view.

He'd expected the place to be closed at nearly 11, but one of the doors is held open by a doorstop, and Chikara leans aside with his eyebrows raised.

"Are you open?" he asks, voice thrown toward the woman turned away from him at the bar.

She turns, her short blond hair swinging around her cheeks, and then an achingly familiar grin brightens her face. "Well, if it ain't Chikara! Come in, come in, we're always open for Ryu's friends!"

"Saeko," he says, surprised, and follows the way she flaps her hands at him to enter the doorway. No sooner has he approached the bar when the kitchen door swings open, throwing light over the half-light of the bar proper, and a russet-haired man Chikara vaguely recognizes comes through with a tray of glasses.

"Saeko, where do you want these," he asks, and spots Chikara, brow furrowing. "Oh, you're - Karasuno," he says, after a minute, and Chikara nods.

"Date," he says, after a moment, and it's there, it really is - "Futa...kuchi?"

"Yeah," Futakuchi says, a smile quirking his mouth. "And you're..."

Saeko has pity on him. "This is Chikara! Chikara Ennoshita. Works with my brother."

"Ennoshita, right," Futakuchi says, committing the name to memory with quiet repetition.

"Oh, here, you can put the glasses over here," Saeko says, pushing off the counter to clear space underneath. Futakuchi slides the rack in and leaves them with a nod, and Saeko leans on the counter again, eyeing Chikara with a serious sort of light in her eyes.

"They didn't tell me who they were sending, or I'd have called you," she says. "Something to drink?"

"Lemonade," he says, straight-faced, and she shakes her head.

"I always forget you're the serious type," she teases. "Ryu's always ordering a scotch on the rocks."

"He doesn't even _like_ scotch..."

"That's why I give him a splash of rum and some coke," Saeko says, winking, and Chikara feels the lonely tension in his chest ease as she leans down to find a clean glass and scoop ice into it. "Now, you're here about surveillance, aren't you?" she asks, pulling on the tap for the lemonade without much attention for it.

He nods, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans to find his phone. He flicks through his photo album for the picture he'd been provided. "Has this man been here?" he asks, sliding the phone across the bar.

She sets his glass down on a coaster and leans over to pull the phone toward her as he takes his first sip of sour-sweet lemonade. "Yeah, I know this guy," she says, tapping the screen. "Comes in around two, orders a beer or three, plays pool - he's shitty at it, so he's always losing - then wanders out around eight. Futakuchi might know something else - hey! Futakuchi! C'mere!"

"I'm in the middle of prepping the fryer," Futakuchi says, the complaint cool and clearly old hat as he wipes his hands on his apron and leans over to look at Chikara's phone over Saeko's shoulder. "Oh, this guy? He heads down to the hostess club around eight every night. Sometimes I catch him leaving the place when I go to take the trash out, but he doesn't seem like he's been spending much time with a hostess."

Chikara had pulled out the well-worn, half-full notebook he kept all his notes in around the moment he'd put his cup down, and he looks up now, his pen paused over the page. "Is there anything weird about him?" he asks.

Saeko looks sidelong as Futakuchi, who looks back, and she furrows her brow like her brother when he's trying to decide on an ice pop flavor before she says, "it never seems like he's got any money problems, but he's here every day. And it's not like he's not friendly, but he never comes in here with anybody."

That seems - suspicious, perhaps, but it's not enough to recommend a full investigation. "Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you not to say anything to him," he says, tucking his pen in the notebook and taking his phone back from Saeko's well-manicured fingers. "It's not on the books, yet. But thank you for your help."

"Any time," Saeko says, "you settling in?"

"For now," he agrees, "is there a corner you suggest?"

She hums, thoughtful. "That one's usually pretty empty," she says, pointing to a booth that overlooks most of the bar. "It's a little far out from the action, though."

"That's not a problem," Chikara says, smiling slow. "Thanks."

"I'll just keep the lemonade coming," she says, waving him off.

\---

True to Saeko's information, the man he's here to watch over - barely taller than Chikara himself, mid-30's, brown hair, not unattractive but hardly a real looker, dressed nicely but not much more than Chikara's button-down and jeans ensemble - arrives at two thirty. He makes his way through a beer and a half, leaving the second to sweat on the table he'd thrown his jacket over, before he joins the slightly rowdy crowd already betting on pool. Chikara's camera, uncapped, lays unassumingly under his backpack, where it isn't immediately visible unless someone is staring. Chikara sips through his fourth lemonade and keeps one eye on the camera's clearer perception of the room. It's about what he expects, the spirits and creatures in the crowd more dark than light, but he doesn't see anything much more dangerous than a nightwalker.

That is, besides his target. Chikara is used to people appearing blurry, incorporeal, or otherwise inhuman and unreal, in his lens. What he isn't used to is... nothing. The man simply doesn't appear, an empty space the camera sees through entirely. It makes his stomach lurch the first few times he catches it, but even that, too, becomes familiar by the time the sun has set and the man begins to pull back from the crowd. Chikara moves quickly to slip out before him, letting Saeko wave away his attempt to pay his tab with only a cursory complaint, and steps into the alleyway where Alecto's dumpster is hidden. Futakuchi leans against the side door, a cigarette dangling in his fingertips, and he nods to Chikara as he waits for the man to pass. He waves a short hello-goodbye to Saeko's ~~minion~~ employee, tailing the man with the easy familiarity of practice. He pushes down on his power to be doubly safe, hands in the pockets of his light jacket and attention-grabbing camera carefully tucked in his backpack.

The man stops, true to Futakuchi's testimony, at the entrance to a garishly-lit club bragging about the prettiest girls in town, and waves to the girl passing out flyers at the front with an easy hello. Her response is drowned out by a motorcycle thundering past, and Chikara coughs through the thick exhaust, pulling back into the alcove of the closed music store across the street and down the block from the hostess club. Whatever she says makes the man laugh, and he goes inside. Chikara sighs, his body sagging, and steps out of the alcove to find somewhere to sit and wait.

There's a convenience store three stores down, near the club but not across from it, and Chikara steps inside to buy a curry bread and a magazine before he finds his way back to the darkened alcove of the closed music store. He's squinting to read an article about cooking _tonkatsu_ in the magazine spread over his knees, his phone in his palm waiting for a message from Akaashi and the cold of the very early morning settling into his bones despite his jacket. The club's lights turn off abruptly, the loss of the bright pink and purple making the dark night seem darker, and Chikara stands up, tucking his wrapper and magazine in his bag, his phone in his pocket. He leans on the alcove's wall, head tilted to the side, and waits once more. The man is the last of the customers out. His gait is high-spirited and cheerful, at least as far as Chikara can tell, and while there's a momentary flicker across the shadow the man casts from the convenience store's harsh yellow lights, Chikara puts it down as a maybe. It wouldn't be the first time he'd thought he'd seen something he hadn't, when he was tired.

The man loiters on the curb until a dark-windowed white sedan pulls up, and he slides inside. Chikara's eyes flicker to the license plate, and he commits the numbers to memory before it pulls away. He texts it to Yachi with a note about identifying the owner, and sets off to go back to his apartment.

The next morning, sleep still heavy in his bones, he drags himself awake to slap off of his alarm and seek under his pillow for the Crow amulet. With his palm pressed warm against the dark stone, he reaches out for Shimizu, who stirs in his direction.

"Ennoshita," she says, her voice sounding like she's in the room instead of at least an hour's drive from his apartment. "Have you found anything?"

"I was hoping I could check in with you," he says, eyes shutting so he can concentrate. "The target's not showing up on camera."

"Not... showing up? That's unusual, isn't it?"

"No one's ever been _completely invisible_. Sometimes I can't get them into focus, but it was like he was invisible. I didn't see any sign of magic or possession."

"I'll look into it for you. You might want to consider asking Date's Aone, since he's in the area."

"Aone's here?" It's hard to keep the excitement out of his voice as he fumbles one-handed for his phone.

"Hinata was very distressed to find they'd missed each other," Shimizu says, amusement warming her voice, even though she doesn't quite laugh.

Chikara's used to that part. "Hinata's loss'll have to be my gain," he says, "thank you, Shimizu, I'll check in with you in a few days...?"

"Thursday, before noon," she agrees, and he stops flicking through his contacts to add to his calendar, so he won't forget.

"Thursday... before... noon," he confirms, slowly, typing. "I'll let you get back to work."

"Goodbye, Ennoshita," Shimizu agrees, and her contact cuts off. He loosens his grip on the amulet, the tightness with which he'd been holding the stone left behind in an impression of the filigree. He drops the amulet in his lap and rubs his fingers against one another.

There are no messages from Akaashi, but he types one out to Aone, the uneasiness over Akaashi's uncharacteristic complete silence distracting him as lays back down to sleep until at _least_ 11.

The next week passes in this heavy-handed, dirge-like rhythm, with very minor variation - sometimes the car Yachi has tentatively identified as probably yakuza-owned picks the man up, sometimes it's a cab, sometimes he's not in the club for long and walks out looking discontent. It turns out Aone is on a circuit of checking city wards, and won't be in town for a few days, and when he reports to Shimizu she confesses she's narrowed down the options to about a hundred different demons, but she needed a little more time, and could he offer any other information? Chikara can feel the monotony dulling his instincts already, and it's with a deep-seated sort of frustrated restlessness stirring in his bones that he decides it's time to move in for something more personal. He has to get into the hostess club and find out what was happening there.

\---

"Suga," he says, when the amulet finally resonates with Sugawara's clear, cool energy. He's just gotten home from tailing, a mug of tea wafting steam on the table in front of him and a heavier sweatshirt pulled over his t-shirt to ward off the night's chill.

"Ennoshita, hello," he says, and the energy surges, changes to something so warm it could burn him.

"Chikara!!"

"Hello, Nishinoya," Chikara says, biting a smile, and gets straight to business. "I think it's time I moved to more direct surveillance."

"It's only been a week, Ennoshita," Sugawara says, warning in his voice.

"I haven't found out anything except that he really sucks at pool," Chikara says, "and that Shimizu can't narrow down who could be lending him power yet. He keeps disappearing into a hostess club and I'd like to make my way inside." He pauses, lets Nishinoya wolf-whistle, and continues as if he hadn't been interrupted at all. "It wouldn't be a confrontation. I just want to get closer and see if I can put together more pieces of the puzzle."

"Well, if he feels like he's gettin' there, we oughta let him," Nishinoya says, his voice garbled like he's eating something. (The sound is disgustingly familiar.)

Sugawara hums, thinking. "All right," he says, "but be careful."

"I will be," Chikara agrees, relieved beyond words for the approval. "Unlike some people, I don't rush into fights I don't know if I can win."

He cuts off Nishinoya's _'Hey! What's that supposed to mean?!'_ by letting go of the amulet, and flops on his back, staring at the ceiling. Tomorrow, he'd take a closer look at the club, and see about slipping in a back entrance to spy on what was going on inside. He sighs, long, wondering if the quivering feeling in his chest from nerves about taking the next step by himself, or about the fact that he's still heard nothing from Akaashi. Both, probably, he thinks, and drags himself up to work on his tea and review his notes on the club.

His phone buzzing makes him jerk, and he looks at the screen. Konoha, from Fukurodani. They had each other's numbers out of necessity; they'd spoken a few times in Tokyo, but they hadn't exactly been best pals, so what was he messaging him at nearly four in the morning over? He taps the notification to open the message, and the reason becomes immediately clear. The quivering in his chest drops like a stone. _Akaashi's in the hospital after a fight with Preacher. I thought somebody ought to tell you since he's a little busy._ Chikara thanks him, but his attention is on another contact: Bokuto, who was inevitably with Akaashi.

Bokuto's response to his text is nearly immediate. _He cut his arm open and hit his head, we think he'll be okay but he hasn't woken up yet so I can't test for possession._ There's nothing else, after that, and it feels like Chikara's barely closed his eyes at all when his alarm goes off.

\---

"You look like hell," Saeko says, not unkindly, "seriously, Futakuchi's come in hung over looking better than you. You want a beer?"

He frowns, considering it. He could use it, probably, but his head's already in the wrong place. "No," he says, after a minute.

Saeko's eyebrows furrow, and she glances up at him, then down, as she fills a lemonade glass wordlessly. "I dunno what the hell happened," she says, when he reaches for the lemonade, "but it's gonna be fine. Unless you got dumped, in which case, join the club, kiddo."

"You've been dumped lately?" Chikara asks, falsely innocent, out of habit. When a Tanaka says something suspect, he calls it out. The routine of the last eight years.

Saeko's eyes flash, and her mouth splits in a crooked grin. "There's the Chikara I know," she says, fond, "but don't ask a girl about her dating life! Shoo."

That's a 'no', then. He holds it in: the younger Tanaka wasn't likely to do more than scowl and yell, but Saeko would probably make him eat his glass.

He's more restless than usual by the time two forty-five ticks in, and with it, the man he's been taking notes on for a week and a half, now. Chikara's allowed himself to be dragged into playing pool twice, now, to try and keep himself from being too noticeable, but the only urge he has that involves a pool cue right now is hardly the appropriate use for it. He drums his fingers on the table, and glances at his phone so often it must look like he thinks it'll disappear if he's not looking at it for fifteen seconds.

Evening can't come soon enough, and Chikara walks with purpose in his step as he tails the man. The staff entrance was usually unlocked - he'd checked last Friday - with the catch that there was someone sitting just inside. There was a back entrance, but that had a bouncer outside. It looked like whatever serious underworld connections this club had - and it smelled like plenty - the back was where they were allowed to move as freely as they pleased. It's that entrance Chikara goes for now. There's a single blind spot where he can hop the fence, if he's quick, where the parking lot lights didn't shine. He pulls the straps of his backpack tight and rolls up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, taking a deep breath. He had to time this carefully, when a group was getting ready to go inside. He could blend in with a group by concealing himself from sight, and hopefully be able to get a good look around, before leaving through the front like a regular customer. Pulling the door open himself, after all, would be enough to break the trick in the way he hid himself just barely in the veil where the spirits walked.

But first, the fence. He reaches for a link and tightens his fingers above his head, getting his shoe up against the fence to pull himself up. Getting to the top isn't much problem, though there's a moment when he's trying to swing his leg over where he thinks he's been caught - but it's just a weather spirit humming its way along the roof of the next building, and he sags a fraction with relief before pulling his other leg over. He drops with a carefully pushed down thud, the sound lost in the noise of a city breathing. There are enough cars that he can duck down behind one, and he reaches for his phone to make sure it's silenced (and that there's nothing from Bokuto). He moves carefully from the cover of one car to the next before he finds a group of guys who feel like small fry, from their garish dress shirts to the smell of demon magic coming off of them. That, of course, was perfect - he could find plenty of ways to fit in around men who smelled so much like the mortar of the other side.

He holds his breath as an extra precaution - unnecessary, but reflexive, from the days when he'd been fumbling his way into Daichi's position as a squad leader and looking for any edge he could get - but it seems like being as careful as possible was pointless in the first place. The bouncers, huge walls of human in dark suits, smell perfectly mundane, and not in the same way he did. Perfectly normal... that wasn't completely suspect, it'd keep them from sensing anything abnormal, presumably, but it is unusual.

The back entrance glitters with low gold lights and the kind of plush red carpeting only yakuza would find endearing, and Chikara gets away from it as soon as a busboy opens the side entrance to the staff room, following him as quietly as he can manage. Getting through the staff room isn't hard: there are five or six people in the room, not to mention about eight dress racks filled with sequin-covered monstrosities that would take all attention off of him even if he weren't suppressing his presence. The door out into the hall is open, and he sneaks around the corner. The main office was probably further down the hall, in the quiet back half, but he can hear the floor to his left. A glimpse might help, he decides, and turns.

There's a helpful potted plant to duck behind until someone is walking by and he can hide in their shadow, jumping from one person running champagne to the next until he finds the shadow of the coat rack. Not his most noble hiding spot, certainly, but it was dark, and pretty quiet, and he can see over the desk just enough to get a look at the center stage of the club.

For half an hour, the club seems disappointingly normal, the occasional flash of demonic power aside. Suddenly, however, the lights flicker out, then come back on, darker and warmer than before. The stage's spotlight changes colors to red, and Chikara swallows, feeling his heartbeat jackhammer in his chest. He reaches up to loosen the cord at his sweatshirt's neck and pull his amulet out to atop the shirt he was wearing underneath. He pulls his hand away, not willing to activate it yet, and waits for someone to speak, breathing carefully slowly.

He gets a glimpse of the man he's been tailing on the stage, which is his only warning before a demonic tongue fills the club with hissing and grunts. He holds down his reflexive wince, his instincts standing on end and screaming to run, to leave, to escape whatever higher order of demon was being called down. A human's mouth shouldn't be capable of speaking something so advanced, Chikara could barely call the creature whose power _he_ borrowed without his tongue going thick and dry in his mouth for several hours, and this was several orders above that - he feels a little sick to his stomach when he catches red blood over the lower half of the man's face. He wonders, absently, his mind deadly calm despite the fear buzzing under his skin, if that was why he couldn't see the man through a camera lens - was the man's body being recreated, projected by a demon from the other side? Was this man trapped after a bad bargain, doing the demon's work but stuck on the other side, no longer real on this end at all?

His thoughts grind to a halt when he realizes the man is looking in his direction, eyes black and sick. Oh, no.

There's a sickening cracking noise as what is probably a projected avatar breaks into the form of the demon probably doing the projection. It must be eight feet tall: he spots six arms, fur and scale, three tails, and a face so horrifyingly inhuman Chikara doesn't think he'll ever forget it. He stumbles out of the coat rack in time to avoid a stream of fire so hot he feels it as he rolls away. The demon breaks through the doorway, tracking him with its dark eyes, and Chikara realizes, abruptly, that he's been lured here.

The front door feels like an eternity away as he makes a run for it. The club's staff seem to be trying to keep out of the creature's way, but there's no screaming until someone isn't fast enough, and Chikara hears a squelch. He doesn't look back, stomach churning, and pushes through the white-and-gold double doors of the club, turning immediately away from the direction of the Alecto and running for the complicated backstreets of the other half of downtown. The demon likely didn't know much about the city, if it was projecting through a monotonous daily loop of activity instead of diverging from routine. He turns down an alleyway as the demon roars, breaking down the club's storefront. There are a few scattered screams, but the creature must be focused on him, because he can feel its attention following him like phantom claws dragging at his limbs. He pulls his backpack around as he runs, looping the straps over his arms and pulling it close against his chest. He couldn't afford to lose either of his cameras to a fall or an attack.

The next step is his amulet, before squashing his power and hiding out while he figured out a plan. He presses his palm to the stone, pushing a flash of power that would make him a beacon to both the Organization... and the creature following him. He pushes down on his scent and power as soon as he's flashed his power out, and turns down another street, hoping he's not going to hit a dead end just yet. The creature's attention is still on him, still following him like a dog.

 _Think_ , Chikara, he worries to himself. Think. What could he do to immobilize the creature and keep it from hurting anyone? If he could catch it from hoof to ugly horned head on film, he could capture it, but he doesn't think he'll be able to do that without freezing it first.

The circle that protected the town's magical center. Aone was coming to do adjustments and check the wards, but wards like that were always double-walled, so it would work. Town circles used pure magic - the kind that relied on natural power in the land and air - instead of the demonic creatures that Karasuno contracted and controlled. They were opposing forces - the winds of the world and outside force looking to control it - and it would work against the demon-made-flesh looking to make him mincemeat. It would work against _him_ , too, but he wasn't exactly a particularly strong magician. If he suppressed his power as much as possible, the damage would be minimal, and if he stopped the demon, it'd be worth it.

The magical center is easy to grab hold of - it feels like the vaguely headache-inducing power of the temple, only gentler. It still feels just as wrong to approach, but he flashes his power again and again to keep the crashing and burning of the demon's pursuit close at his heels and ignores his instincts once more. The magical center of the city is, predictably, the city park, where nature and spirits lived closest along one another within the city, and as he crosses the barrier of the ward, he hisses, power burning along his skin. He reaches up for the zipper of his backpack with shaking fingers, trying to pull it open and failing. It's coming, he can hear it, smell it, feel it - he runs closer toward the burning wrongness of the ward's center, finally managing to grab hold of the zipper and yank it. He fishes inside for the Polaroid, and when he finds it he turns, camera in his hands as he sets his feet and looks the demon in its unfathomable black eyes. He lifts the camera, waiting, and tenses for another fireball.

The demon speaks in its tongue, which hurts his ears to hear, this close, and his knees nearly buckle. He stands his ground, and waits for the demon to cross the ward.

It does, but when it continues to move, he realizes with rising horror that the ward is doing its work on him, first. If he can get out of the ward, maybe he can - but no, from here he can see the shimmer of a barrier. He was trapped in here with this creature until someone took it down. He snaps a picture, gritting his teeth when the flash went off but the demon still stood. He must have missed, or the demon knew the trick, which was a lot more terrifying.

He turns to run once more, but without buildings to crash through or people to distract it, the demon is _fast_ , and pain flashes across his shoulder as he just barely misses getting worse than a gouge. He cries out, stumbling, and changes direction to enter the trees off the bike path. He hears the approaching fire seconds before he feels the wave of heat, and he throws himself sideways to dodge, just barely.

He's running out of trees. He turns, trying to snap another picture, but misses once more. He's just going to run out of film if he keeps trying desperately, but he doesn't have any idea what to do. 

A beam of light zips over his head, and he turns to watch it. Another follows, and then a third, and Chikara could cry when he spots Yamaguchi at the end of the path. The uncertain control Yamaguchi has over his ability to channel pure magic has certainly been shaping up lately, but watching Yamaguchi send the demon to its knees, howling, he's very nearly frightened. 

Chikara turns, lifting the Polaroid to his face. He looks through the viewfinder, and waits. The demon looks up, anguish a uniquely human expression on its two-mouthed face. He hits the shutter, and the creature howls once more before disappearing. The photo that drops from the front of the Polaroid smokes and stinks with the scent of it, and Chikara lets it fall at his feet without touching it.

"Thanks for getting here so fast," he says, to Yamaguchi, about fifteen seconds before blood loss makes him light-headed.

\---

The next twenty minutes are kind of a blur, between Aone lowering the banner and helping him back to Alecto, to Saeko's pale face when she sees him, and, finally, Suga and Nishinoya alternately fussing over him and congratulating Yamaguchi on a job well done before he's gone again for - something. Probably something Tsukishima-related, from the anxious way he seems ready to leave the whole time.

"What are you guys even doing here," Chikara asks, when he's not seeing double and laying on the staff couch, bandages stiff over his shoulder.

"We got your distress call, and then Shimizu came running in with a name," Suga says, tapping the developed Polaroid where the demon would be trapped until Kageyama and Hinata could banish it back to the other side. He frowns, and turns the photo over. "Yamaguchi was in the area, but we came as backup when we realized Saeko's end of the gate was working again." The last is directed over Chikara's head at the woman in question.

"We've got Futakuchi to thank for that," she says, "I'm just glad I got the damn amulet to work this time."

"So are we," Suga agrees. His eyes turn toward Chikara. "You were careless."

"Yeah, this was totally not like you," Nishinoya agrees, the definition of careless as he throws himself over Chikara's shins. "What happened?"

"It didn't occur to me that I was being watched back," he says, "I was... distracted. Getting in was way too easy."

"Wound up gettin' caught in a trap," Nishinoya says. "You're lucky."

"Yeah," he agrees, and looks down. "Sorry."

Nishinoya pats his thigh companionably. "If he was trying to trap you, he'd have followed you back to your place after you ignored the bait."

He sighs. He's still got plenty of experience to gain, apparently. He shifts around to pull his phone out of his sweatshirt pocket, and surprise lifts his features. A message from Bokuto. ...five messages from Bokuto.

The first two are explanations - 'my phone died and i didn't have my charger, sorry!' and 'eighteen stitches but he woke up fine and passed the test just fine' - and the next two are pictures, one of Akaashi frowning at the camera with confusion, and one of them both, Bokuto's cheek against Akaashi's dark hair, and Akaashi looks tired but alert enough, his mouth curved in a small smile. The last is clearly from Akaashi. _'I got him.'_

Chikara smiles, and Nishinoya and Suga share glances before they start needling him, which is about what he probably deserves.


End file.
